"Now he enters into the third
part of this treatise touching the right use of spiritual gifts, in
which he gives the Corinthians plainly to understand that they
abused them. For they that excelled bragged ambitiously of them, and
so robbed God of the praise of his gifts: and having no
consideration of their brethren, abused them to a vain display, and
so robbed the church of the use of those gifts."

"The greater the gifts are,
the more the possessor is exposed to temptations, and the larger is
the measure of grace needed to keep him humble and spiritual; and he
will meet with more painful experiences and humbling dispensations.
We have little cause to glory in any gifts bestowed on us, or to
despise those who have them not."

"The gift of healing need not
be wholly confined to the healing diseases with a word or a touch.
It may exert itself also, though in a lower degree, where natural
remedies are applied; and it may often be this, not superior skill,
which makes some physicians more successful than others. And thus it
may be with regard to other gifts likewise. As, after the golden
shields were lost, the king of Judah put brazen in their place, so,
after the pure gifts were lost, the power of God exerts itself in a
more covert manner, under human studies and helps; and that the more
plentifully, according as there is the more room given for it."

"But the ill consequences of
even this species of schism do not terminate in the heart. Evil
tempers cannot long remain within, before they are productive of
outward fruit. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh."

"By the love which pervades
the whole, the gifts of the several members, forming reciprocal
complements to each other, tend to the one object of perfecting the
body of Christ. The ordinary and permanent gifts are comprehended
together with the extraordinary, without distinction specified, as
both alike flow from the divine indwelling Spirit of life. The
extraordinary gifts, so far from making professors more peculiarly saints
than in our day, did not always even prove that such persons
were in a safe state at all."

"The inward workings of the
Spirit are not always the same, but it is God, one God, the same
God, who causes them all. The object of this section is to show that
one divine source accounts for spiritual gifts diverse in their
manifestations."

"Through all the ebb and flow of history, the church has been and will continue to be 'emerging.' It cannot help but continue to emerge because it is a part of God’s new world that has been 'emerging' And it will continue to be 'emerging' until the day when God’s glory—God’s love, God’s freedom, God’s joy, God’s very life—fills the whole earth."

"Paul is suggesting that focus on
spiritual gifts can amount to nothing more than being carried away and can
achieve exactly the opposite of what Jesus stands for (in effect, cursing
him, rather than acclaiming him)."

"This text provides a powerful
opportunity to share the profound impact racism has had on the idea of
diversity amidst unity, labeling it as something deviant or
unachievable. Such thinking has undermined America?s ability to become
the global salad bowl (not melting pot) it alleges to be."

"Truly spiritual gifts,
genuinely charismatic persons all are "activated" by the
same Spirit, the same Lord, the same God. "To each is given the
manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." Personal
faith is never private, for it exists only in a public body
"for the common good.""